Among the big political news stories of the week — Kamala Harris formally clinching the Democratic nomination; the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate — was the bizarre tale of Robert F. Kennedy leaving a dead bear in New York City’s iconic Central Park, ending a decadelong local mystery.
As soon as it became clear to Kennedy that he would no longer be able to keep his illegal stunt a secret, the independent presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist went into damage control. He concocted a story that was clearly aimed at making his decision to dump the bear’s carcass more palatable to the general public.
But his explanation makes as little sense as the act itself.
Gordon Batcheller, who retired as New York state’s chief wildlife biologist in 2015 but spoke to HuffPost in his personal capacity, has followed the Kennedy bear cub story closely. He described Kennedy’s actions as perplexing, unlawful and wildly disrespectful of a wild animal.
Looking at the whole scenario, the word ‘bizarre’ just leaps forward in my mind. Gordon Batcheller, former chief wildlife biologist of New York state
“As a citizen, even as a biologist, looking at the whole scenario, the word ‘bizarre’ just leaps forward in my mind in terms of behavior of this individual,” Batcheller told HuffPost by phone on Tuesday. “The thought that somehow doing this prank would be amusing or something — just bizarre.”
As for Kennedy’s account of what happened, Batcheller said “it sounds to me like a 4-year-old who was meddling with mom’s freshly cooked pies, got caught and started fabricating some excuse about his dog and cat and little sister and everything else.”
“Bottom line, it’s wrong.”
Earlier this week, The New Yorker was on the cusp of reporting as part of a lengthy profile that in October 2014, Kennedy callously and illegally dumped the carcass of a young black bear in Central Park and staged it to look like the animal had been struck and killed by a cyclist.
On Sunday, a day before the magazine went to press, Kennedy posted a video to X, formerly Twitter, in which he confessed — to an often stunned-looking Roseanne Barr, of all people — that he was responsible for the decade-old mystery, chalking it up to little more than a harmless prank.
In Kennedy’s telling, ditching the bear cub in the heart of Manhattan wasn’t always his intention. It was simply what he resorted to after a long, successful day of falconry — that is, hunting with trained birds of prey — a fancy dinner in New York City and the realization that he had an early flight to catch the next morning. In short, those commitments spoiled what he led his audience to believe were totally reasonable plans to salvage the carcass and keep the meat.
The 60-year-old environmental lawyer, “avid outdoorsman” and “master falconer” explained to Barr that he was en route to New York’s Hudson Valley for a day of falconry when a woman driving in front of him “hit a bear and killed it — a young bear.”
“So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear and it was in very good condition,” he said, fidgeting in his chair. “And I was gonna put the meat in my refrigerator — and you can do that in New York state, you can get a bear tag for a roadkill bear.”
Before we get into the rest of Kennedy’s rambling account, it is worth noting that what Kennedy did is illegal in New York, regardless of whether he had a license, or tag, to hunt a black bear at the time, which remains unclear.
“Let’s say you’re a hunter and you have a bear tag as part of your hunting license, you still can’t pick up a bear on the side of the road,” Batcheller said. “You just can’t.”
Salvaging a roadkill animal falls under an entirely separate permitting process completely unrelated to hunting, Batcheller explained. The process requires individuals to first report the animal and then obtain a permit from either the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation or local law enforcement.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, which led the 2014 investigation into the bear cub’s death, told HuffPost that under the state’s environmental law, possession of a bear without a license or permit and illegal disposal of a bear are both subject to fines of up to $250 for the first offense. However, the statute of limitations for such offenses is one year, meaning Kennedy can no longer be charged or prosecuted.
DEC does not publicly release individuals’ sporting license information unless subpoenaed to do so or the individual authorizes their release. The agency also does not keep records of permits for salvaging roadkill animals, it said.
Kennedy’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
Independent Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pictured here during an event in Nashville, Tennessee in July, confessed in a bizarre video posted to social media that he was the one who dumped a dead black bear cub in New York City's Central Park in 2014.
Kennedy had an opportunity to do something good, to shine light on the many benefits of salvaging roadkill wildlife, which include utilizing meat that would otherwise go to waste and protecting scavengers, including foxes and vultures, that could also be hit when trying to feast on a roadside carcass. Dozens of states allow for salvaging certain roadkill animals, although permits are usually required, and some states have programs that collect roadkill for local food banks.
Batcheller noted that roadkill animals are also often of interest to conservation officials for biological data and scientific research.
When it comes to processing wild game, be it a deer harvested with a rifle or a bear salvaged off the side of the road, time is of the essence. It is crucial to remove the animal’s internal organs, strip the hide and cool the meat as quickly as possible to keep it from spoiling.
“Taking a bear, which I would suspect was not field dressed — so now it’s just a whole bear with all the internal organs — throwing it in a trunk, it’s just going to be a bacteria factory,” Batcheller said. “The meat would be kaput at that point.”
By his own admission, Kennedy did nothing to safeguard the quality of the bear meat. Instead, he stashed the animal in his trunk for an entire day — something no informed person would do if planning to consume it — before ultimately deciding to stage the carcass to look like the cub had been hit by a bike in the middle of the most populated city in the country.
“I didn’t want to leave the bear in the car, because that would have been bad,” he said in the video. “So then I thought, at that time — this was a little bit of the redneck in me — there had been a series of bicycle accidents in New York. They had just put in the bike lanes. A couple of people had gotten killed, and it was every day, and people had been badly injured.”
“I wasn’t drinking of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea,” Kennedy went on. “I had an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of, and I said, ‘Let’s go put the bear in Central Park and we’ll make it look like he got hit by a bike. It will be fun, funny for people.’ Everybody thought, ‘That’s a great idea!’ So we went and did that and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it.”
When the bear was discovered the next day, the story garnered national media attention. Police and conservation officials scrambled to figure out how the animal got there, with no success. Few found the incident amusing.
New York Police and New York State Environmental Conservation officers investigate the site where a bear cub was found dead under bushes in New York's Central Park in October 2014.
For 10 years, Kennedy kept quiet — until he got caught.
“Luckily, the story died after a while. And it stayed dead for a decade,” he said in the video. “The New Yorker somehow found out about it and they’re going to do a big article on me … It’s going to be a bad story.”
In the video, Barr and others are heard chuckling at Kennedy’s disturbing tale. One man outside the camera’s frame says, “I think it’s a great story.”
Above the video, Kennedy wrote, “Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker …”
The story requires zero spin. Kennedy made a mockery of a well-established code of ethics among hunters, which include obeying all rules and regulations, not wasting game meat and treating wildlife with respect.
While Kennedy wasn’t hunting for bear that day, and one might argue that ethical hunting principles don’t apply to recovering roadkill, he almost certainly knew better. His preferred method of hunting, falconry, is “the most highly regulated field sport in the U.S.,” according to the Michigan Hawking Club. Kennedy is a “ licensed master falconer ” and a former president of the New York State Falconry Association.
“If he’s a licensed master falconer, he’s gone through one of the most rigorous wildlife regulatory processes that’s in existence,” Batcheller said. “Someone like Mr. Kennedy, a falconer, certainly knows there’s a wildlife agency out there that deals with wildlife.”
The New Yorker profile included a graphic picture of Kennedy with the dead bear. It shows Kennedy sitting in the back of a van, with blood stains on his pants, his fingers shoved into the lifeless cub’s bloody mouth and what the New Yorker described as “a comical grimace across his face,” as if pretending the bear was biting him.
“Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm,” Kennedy told The New Yorker, referring to a parasite that doctors apparently found in his brain.
New York DEC directed HuffPost to a page on its website about how to properly dispose of and safely handle dead animals. Among other things, it advises people to “be careful of teeth, claws, bone splinters, or porcupine quills.”
Along with educating hunters about how to properly care for and process wild game, Batcheller said wildlife officials in New York and around the country emphasize the importance of respecting the animals they harvest. The rules of fair chase , a set of ethical hunting principles developed by the nonprofit Boone and Crockett Club, calls on hunters to “behave in a way that will bring no dishonor to either the hunter, the hunted, or the environment.”
So what should Kennedy have done? “Report it. Get the permit. Treat the animal with the utmost respect as a prized source of great game meat. Transport it with dignity. Do it right,” Batcheller said. “There’s a way to do it right.”
“If he was sitting right here, I would say, ‘Mr. Kennedy, you demonstrated extremely poor judgment in what you think is amusing or appropriate,’” he added. “Extremely poor judgment. I would tell that to his face, without hesitating.”
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